Now, the U.S. military is starting to target children for assassination in battle zones. As the Nation reports:

In a despicable article in Military Times, the US military says that children are legitimate targets in the war in Afghanistan because sometimes the Taliban and other insurgents use kids.

In the original incident, which I cited in October, The New York Times reported it this way:

The…case of three children allegedly killed in a coalition strike was reported by local officials in Helmand Province’s Nawa district. The officials said that the children were killed in a NATO strike on Sunday afternoon as they were gathering dung to burn as fuel, a common practice in the desert reaches of southern Afghanistan where there are few trees.

***

The Marja governor said that NATO forces watched as improvised explosive devices were being planted, and targeted the insurgents planting them. “As a result two I.E.D. planters were killed and the shrapnel killed the three children who were wandering nearby,” he said. Other reports said that three insurgents had been killed.

A spokesman for the international forces, Maj. Adam Wojack, said that the coalition forces were aware of the allegations and that the episode was being investigated. “I.S.A.F. did conduct a precision airstrike on three insurgents in Nawa district, and the strike killed all three insurgents,” he said.

“None of our reporting shows any civilian casualties or any children.”

But on December 3 Gannett, which owns Military Times, ran an article headlined: “Some Afghan Kids Aren’t Bystanders.” It said:

When Marines in Helmand province sized up shadowy figures that appeared to be emplacing an improvised explosive device, it looked like a straightforward mission. They got clearance for an airstrike, a Marine official said, and took out the targets.

It wasn’t that simple, however. Three individuals hit were 12, 10 and 8 years old, leading the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul to say it may have “accidentally killed three innocent Afghan civilians.”

But a Marine official here raised questions about whether the children were “innocent.” Before calling for the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System mission in mid-October, Marines observed the children digging a hole in a dirt road in Nawa district, the official said, and the Taliban may have recruited the children to carry out the mission.

Shockingly, the article quotes a senior officer saying that the military isn’t just out to bomb “military age males,” anymore, but kids, too:

No,no,no…….It’s Komunist/Nazi propaganda! Only the Nazis were targeting children in Warsaw ghetto

Seen the photo thousand time of a Nazi laughing at the poor afraid child in Warsaw ghetto. It was a Nazi soldier not one of our brave & free soldier?
I think that it was a Nazi targeting those children in Afghanistan!
You couldn’t imagine that our brave & free soldier from our free democracy could do this?

Makati1

When this happens in some ‘heathen’ country, we don’t complain. After all, it is “keeping them over there”. But when it starts to happen on the streets of an American city and it is our own CIA, what then? If Pakastan was capable of sending a drone into Washington and they take out the White House…would you complain? Oops! Bad analogy..lol. Most of us would cheer. But, what if it was your family at a wedding and suddenly the drones appear and the rockets take out most of your family? Would you still ignore it? What REAL justification is there for either murder?

Gail

I believe it is called “Ethnic Cleansing.” And the next BIG Ethnic cleansing is the whole of North Africa. See this very good interview from Press Tv. “Western corporations eyeing Mali’s uranium and oil resources seek to ethnically cleanse the native Tuareg population, a political analyst
tells Press TV. In the background of this, Malian Prime Minister Cheikh
Modibo Diarra has resigned along with his government hours after he was
arrested by the forces of the junta, which led a recent coup in the
country.”

Bruce

U.S. Viet (Gang) Nam deja vu, Alles ueber wieder!

buffalo beano

The United States , A Weapon Of Mass Human destruction by the 1% for the 1% ..

Fred Dawes

This is normal in all third world so called nation states this nation state is about to become the big third world country. Understand its not all kids its all white kids who are not gay!

robnume

Last night a young friend of my son’s came home from basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia. He was discharged for refusing to sing a cadence about killing little children. That is how we learned, first hand, about the targeting of children by the U.S. military establishment. This is incredibly sick stuff, folks.

http://www.facebook.com/dennis.boylon Dennis Boylon

Amazing the kid grew up in America and still has a soul. Was he home schooled?

A A

Interesting. I sure hope this song isn’t widespread in other army related things like ROTC… It sure would change my current view of the ROTC at my college if I heard them singing that trash.

david schlicher

its been going on since 04 at least, i still remember many of the cadences by heart…..

dubld

“But a Marine official here raised questions about whether the children were “innocent.”

Meanwhile the military personnel involved, who incidentally, were dropping bombs on sovereign citizens in a foreign country without any legal declaration of war, were the “innocent” ones.

Only in America, and among its brain-dead, denialist dupes, does this story pass muster. To any sane, thinking person it is a total buttfuck of logic, reason, human decency.

noonethatmatters

Sorry this is old news thousands of children were vaporized in Japan when we drop the bomb on them. Or how many Iraqi children died because of US government policy? The government is as sick now as it was then.

bubber

If you have any doubt as to the current mind set of our handlers just check out the video in Wikileaks that Bradley Manning smuggled out. Not only do they massacre unsuspecting civilians but also a some people that were trying to rescue a severely wounded survivor.

Smedley Butler

I was at a JAG briefing recently where a junior captain spouted this new policy. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Groups of three or more men, not in uniform and not carrying weapons, can be liquidated as insurgents or “militants”. This goes against every LOAC brief I’ve ever had. Unbelievable.

Hephaestus

As usual: “We have done our own internal investigation and determined that we are not at fault”.

http://twitter.com/StJohnsNightOut DayInNightOut

blowback in newtown nobody cares about the children in the middle east that the us kill everyday… i feel for everyone.. but where is humanity? Ot’s ok over there!

http://www.facebook.com/people/Rob-Gillespie/1114459456 Rob Gillespie

So George III had his “No child left behind” policy. I guess Obama’s policy is “No child left behind alive”…